A graphic popped up on James Gundlach’s television during an Auburn football game in the fall of 2004, and he could not believe his eyes. One of the university’s prominent football players was being honored as a scholar athlete for his work as a sociology major. Professor Gundlach, the director of the Auburn sociology department, had never had the player in class. He asked the two other full-time sociology professors about the player, and they could not recall having had him either. So Professor Gundlach looked at the player’s academic files, which led him to the discovery that many Auburn...